“I honestly, literally, do not know the answer to that question,” he said when asked if he’s running for the White House.

The Wisconsin congressman is promoting a new book that’s part biography, part policy prescriptions.

Ryan chairs the House Budget Committee, and when Congress returns Sept. 8 from its summer recess, it’ll have only a few weeks to pass a spending plan for fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1.

Ryan said Republicans will not back a shutdown, noting the 2013 closings were a “suicide mission” for the party.

“We will pass a clean [continuing resolution], and if for some reason the Democrats don’t take that, then they will clearly have shut the government down,” he told Dumain. “It will be patently obvious that they are playing politics with this, and trying to trigger a shutdown so they can blame us, but we’re really blameless in this particular situation.”